The Stars from New York

Ulli picked me up; When he walked from his apartment to the concert venue, he practically passed the block where I lived. We drank another beer at my place and walked through the streets. It was Wednesday, September 8, 1999, a real summer day in Karlsruhe, when it made more sense to sit in the countryside and drink beer than to go into a cellar to listen to loud music.

But our intention was clear: “If the stars from Amiland are with us, we shouldn’t miss them,” argued Ulli. Sick Of It All I had seen them several times, I basically knew them. The band from New York usually not only offered loud hardcore punk, but also performed quite well on stage. With them should Good Riddance appear, a newer band that I only knew from their records and had always wanted to see.

We didn’t get any tickets in advance. “Advance ticket sales – that’s not punk,” we completely agreed. Because we passed a small supermarket on the way, we bought a six-pack of beer. You never knew when a concert would actually start, so we hoped to be able to drink a little beforehand.

When we reached the area at the traffic intersection where the “Substage” was located, we realized that we weren’t the only ones who had had the idea to go out spontaneously. Dozens of people, probably more than a hundred, were hanging around the stairs that led to the basement; They all still needed a ticket and lined up to pay and attend the concert.

“What rubbish!” Ulli complained.

I was also somewhat annoyed. »We’re not going to mess with that. That’s too stupid for me.”

We quickly agreed. We sat on the stairs, not at the very beginning, but far enough up so that we could still get the sun, and opened our first beers. So we witnessed the happy hustle and bustle that developed on the stairs. Above all, we got to see a lot of friends and acquaintances and all sorts of assholes.

There were a lot of the latter type in particular. I had the impression that every young hooligan from the Karlsruhe village area was there, as well as tons of fashion hardcores, bodybuilders and metal idiots. It was a temporarily frightening mob that struggled up and down the stairs.

“Wow, what kind of people!” I complained. »For them, hardcore is really just a fashion, they have nothing to do with anything. Such bodybuilders are not interested in any kind of content.«

“Don’t you think you’re generalizing a little?” Ulli grinned. He knew how to piss me off.

“Maybe, maybe.” I tried not to get upset. “But the guys here are as much ‘true hardcore’ as my mother is real.”

»Don’t piss yourself off. It’s 1999 and no longer 1989. Any comparisons between today’s hardcore and the 80s simply have to be wrong.«

I grumbled to myself, but caught myself. As the evening progressed, enough people came by that we knew and liked. Some stopped with us for a beer and a quick chat; some stood next to us to smoke.

At some point the first band played; you could hear them clearly from where we were. We still decided to spend the evening on the stairs. The entrance fee of 24 marks was too high for us anyway; We could have afforded it, but decided we would rather invest the money in beer. That seemed to be more entertaining anyway.

Good Riddance sounded quite good, at least for us the sound was of amazing quality. “Let’s put it this way,” Ulli complained, “it sounds pretty muddled up here – but that’s what it does in the basement too.” The sound in the “Substage” was always considered rather bad, which didn’t matter if you had a few beers in mind.

After the first band finished their performance, many concert goers streamed outside. Micha, the singer of the local hardcore band Red Devilhad no praise for the band and left in a bad mood. He said Good Riddance were really bad: “No announcements, pure rock show, that’s it.”

Other visitors commented positively. The Californians put on a great show, they were completely euphoric. “Tastes are different,” I uttered a truism and drank another beer.

When Sick Of It All started in the basement of the “Substage”, the mood rose. Steam and heat came from the entrance and the hall seemed to be boiling. I thought for a moment about whether I should watch the concert, but then I decided not to. After all, I had seen the band several times, so it was nothing new. We could still hear enough on the stairs, our beer was cheaper, and we quickly organized a refill and had plenty to talk about.

The evening ended somewhere between the stairs and Südweststadt. We were anything but sober, but satisfied with the actual evening. (And that’s probably why I never saw Good Riddance live, even though I liked the band’s records…)

(A shortened version of this text appeared in my egozine “Superklaus”, in the first issue published in January 2000.)